How quickly can I get connected?

Stumpy

Okay - a friend of mine has just moved, major c*ck up with his broadband connection and now has none, but relies on it for business. Can anyone recommend an internet provider who can get him connected and online in superfast time, and give a good overall service?

Madasafish_Customer_Care

Hi Stumpy,

If your friend still has broadband enabled on his line (ie. the mess up didn't involve the provider dropping the ADSL from the line). Then he should request something called a Migration Authorisation Code (MAC) from his supplier.

From there most ISPs can get him moved over to their services pretty quickly - think about 5 working days.

Good luck!

Kind regards,
Samara

Stumpy

Hi - thanks for that, but I think it has probably gone beyond that.

Basically, what happened was he asked his OH to arrange for his current internet provider (some weird local one) to simply move the service from his old address to the new one. However, she must have got a bit confused when she was arranging for BT to sort out telephones for the property and ended up getting broadband from them as well - fairly expensive, 24 month contract apparently.

Anyway, when he realised what had happened, he rang BT and cancelled it straight away - this was several days ago.

He then rang me this morning to ask why his broadband wouldn't work!

At the moment he is managing to use dial-up, although I don't know who he is dialing up through, but I've been checking out various places and the recommended IP's through ADSL Guide's website and Zen seems to provide what he wants. So far I've been quoted about 10-15 working days to get a connection - Zen seems to be quoting 5 but, after reading your post, although it doesn't state it, that could possibly be the migration time, not the new connection time.

Basically he is wanting a fairly low useage small business option - ideally about 3Gb capped (or higher if the package is available) for about £15-£20 pm. He has a domain name so not too bothered about how the e-mail addresses look, doesn't have a website but is intending to create one, but it is not a requirement of an IP as we can get that hosted elsewhere for a fairly reasonable fee, however, a package with webspace (abt. 20Mb or more) and some sort of templating facility would be nice! A backup dialup connection, good customer service, easy to use account control panel and a fairly reliable connection would also be handy!

Cheers.

HotchPotch_2

For business use I would choose Zen or IDnet. If he wants something cheaper maybe an entanet reseller.

5 days for activation is fairly common, it could be quicker if he has had adsl on the line before, but if BT do take longer there's little or nothing that the ISP can do about that.